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Hearing from the leaders of the tech world is always revealing, and very often surprising. In our second annual Silicon Valley Insiders Poll, a panel of 101 executives, innovators, and thinkers weigh in on some of the biggest technological, political, and cultural questions of the moment.
So when we ran an unscientific poll of leaders and thinkers in tech, we had to ask: Which technology do you wish you could un-invent? What innovation do you think should go "back in the box" and be banished forever?
The two winning responses were: selfie sticks and nuclear weapons.
But let's go through some runners-up first.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/11/what-would-you-un-invent/413818/
Which inventions would Soylentils like to un-invent?
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Friday November 06 2015, @01:24PM
The Japanese un-invented the wheel around 1500 AD.
Japanese pictures showing wheeled vehicles have been dated to before that time, but later pictures showed men carrying even heavy stuff by hand. The Japanese deliberately kept themselves technically backward until the latter part of the 19th century when they suddenly changed policy and caught up with a vengence - such that in the war of 1904 they took on Russia, a Great Power, and beat them.
The way things are going with the rise of the green movement, quite a few things are likely to be "uninvented" in the near future - nuclear power and pesticides are early casualties, to be followed I expect by cars, aircraft, paint, and maybe even electricity. I am talking about the West here of course - the rest of the World will look in amusement on our "example" and self-flagellation (as the Greenies see it and want it) and carry on their own way.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Friday November 06 2015, @06:31PM
Nah. Long before we uninvent everything we will simply be replaced by more sane peoples. And since for Europe the replacement will be Islam they will wipe all memory that Christendom ever existed there, with the one good benefit that the suicidal memes that destroyed Western Civilization should get purged along with all it's achievements. By which time their different but equally toxic social problems will probably end them as well. Because they can't maintain technology and their ideology/religion and there won't be a West to provide those things to them anymore. Then China or India get a go at it?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 06 2015, @09:25PM
kept themselves technically backward until the latter part of the 19th century
The date portion is accurate.
You failed to mention, however, how in 1853 USAian Commodore Perry sailed a fleet with 61 cannons into Tokyo Bay and told the Japanese in no uncertain terms that they would open themselves to trade.
-- gewg_